The broad question is a complex and crowded one. So I have to begin with some personal observations. In thinking about Source of European news I am thinking of everything I see, read, hear, and feel personally: what I think when I think about the European Union.
I guess this statement is self-serving. I don’t expect this account to agree with other Europeans. My inclination is that we should make a distinction between what European elites say and what Europeans think and feel about the European Union. But I also think we have little hope of change, whatever it is, if we pretend that all Europeans share the same ideas and feelings.
European Union
What I see, read, hear, and feel personally about the European Union is that I like it. Or at least I don’t think I would like the European Union if it weren’t for the fact that it is different from other political organizations I have seen and experienced. Perhaps that makes me a Europhile.
Certainly I think there is a lot to admire in the political traditions, institutions, and values of most European countries. It is hard for me to see what the European Union is “really” about: especially when we are talking about the single market. That sounds like too much “quaintness” for the modern world.
I think it may be quite correct to say that the major project of the European news Union is to bring Europe together economically, in a way that does not destroy its history, culture, institutions, traditions, and values. Perhaps the best part of this project is the Single Market, for it is hard for me to see how the European Union would grow economically if its founding idea was simply to put our continent into an economic union with people whose cultures and ways of doing things are markedly different from our own. Perhaps one reason why the European Union has lasted this long is that it has accepted the principle of the indivisibility of culture and the distinctiveness of our ways of life.
Of course, in this story, the Europeans are not alone. I think that, were the European Union to break up, many of its members might survive. I doubt whether France could survive alone. The same could be said for Germany, although Germany is too strong to just break up. I think the biggest losers of the European Union’s break-up would be Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and maybe some other countries as well.
European Union cannot be broken up. Europe has been through one of its periodic political and economic crises. But for the most part, Europe has remained together. So it is unrealistic to suppose that Europe can simply break up.
Now, are Europeans going to pay more for Europe’s common pool of economic and political resources? The reason I am asking this question is that, by itself, the Single Market has been a source of economic growth and of some prosperity. The European Union was a source of some of those profits, but the real economic story of the European Union was not about the Single Market.
